


The Wrong Doctor

by Arien



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones, That's a weird tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5230688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arien/pseuds/Arien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha phones the Doctor for help. Not only does she reach the wrong Doctor, but she makes contact with someone she did not expect. She couldn't hope for better help, really, not when the Doctor's all tied up....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wrong Doctor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wojelah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wojelah/gifts).



Martha Jones didn't contemplate the phone in her hand. Once she had made the decision to reach for it, she stuck by her choice - for it was a choice she never made lightly. The Doctor was a busy man. Not busy in the way people of her time thought they were, with deadlines and repayments and pending coffee orders. More in a too many stars to save, not enough hours in the day kind of way. Even when he was just strolling around, trying to blend in, he would be spared very little downtime; trouble was always hot on his heels, and suddenly his time was not really his own anymore.

She used to put a fair bit of thought into what it meant to be a Time Lord - he was so vague about it, and when he did answer her questions the answers invariably changed. It meant this, or it meant that, or, "welllll ... actually it doesn't mean anything at all." She had almost, but not quite, given up trying to part his veils of mystery. They were walls of solid concrete. But perhaps being a Time Lord was all about managing the time of others, and addressing how much of it they had to spend - perhaps he was an embodiment of the Fates, or just Lachesis alone, lengthening the thread of time to his own satisfaction.

Or perhaps it really was not so complex at all. Rarely having anything solid to go on, her imagination sometimes ran wild. What did she know about Time Lords anyway, except for this impenetrable blur of pinstripe in Janis Joplin's trench coat, and a madman?

Whoever they were, whatever they were, Martha needed help. Whenever she phoned the Doctor, he'd come. Sometimes the phone rang forever, but he always got there in the end. He had not failed her yet.

Martha hunkered down and glanced toward the ceiling. There was another boom, not too distant, and dust floated down and settled. She brushed it off her black combat trousers while she held the phone to her ear.

It rang endlessly. "Oh come on, pick up!" Martha growled. She knew his pockets were bigger on the inside, and pictured the Doctor pulling out rubber chickens and live chickens and whole cream cakes trying to find the noisy device.

However, when the phone was answered, it was not at all what Martha expected. To begin with, it was a woman.

There was a low laugh, further from the receiver, and then a warm voice closer, right in Martha's ear. It was a very pleasant, confident voice, but disarming, as Martha had not anticipated this.

"Yes, hello?"

Martha hesitated. "Uh - hello. I'm looking for the Doctor? Can you put him on? Thanks."

Another companion? Where was Donna? She definitely wasn't Donna.

The woman on the other end seemed amused. "How do you know I'm not the Doctor?"

In the background, there was an, "oy!" and another laugh from the woman. Again, it was not intended for Martha.

"Because ... you're not?" The conversation successfully distracted Martha from what was happening outside the bunker. It had also drawn the attention of the soldiers with her, six in total, who sensed she was experiencing unexpected difficulty. "I've met the Doctor? I've travelled with him. So can you just put him on?"

"How do you know I haven't changed my face?"

"What?"

The woman addressed whomever she was physically with. "You haven't even told her about your faces? Why do I let you out?"

Someone replied, but over the shelling and the distance, she couldn't make out the words. Exasperated, she interrupted what was obviously a stellar conversation. "Look, who am I even talking to?"

"My name is River Song."

"So not the Doctor," Martha said, her tone dripping in sarcasm.

"Lucky for us both, no!" River answered cheerfully.

"Excuse me?"

"I'll come. That's what you need, Martha? Bit of help?"

"What? Excuse me? How do you know who I am?"

"The Doctor said, that'll be Martha. Also, caller ID."

"...I didn't think he knew how to set that up."

"Perhaps Donna did it."

"Is Donna there?"

Beat. "No. She's not."

"Look, can I just - put the Doctor on, will you?"

Another beat. "Not the best idea," River said, choosing her words carefully. "Look, thing is, this one's not yours."

"Right, okay, can you just talk properly, because I'm in the middle of a Kestefarian shelling raid, and I really don't have all day!"

"The Doctor," River stressed, finally sounding somewhat irritated herself, "isn't your Doctor! He's got different faces, he changes, and the one you've called isn't yours."

"A later Doctor?" Martha had gone a little quiet.

"Of course later, if he was earlier, he wouldn't know who the bloody hell you are."

"Why does he have my phone?"

River sighed impatiently. "Same person, isn't it? Deep pockets. Present and past happening at the same time. I thought you'd travelled with him."

Martha put her face in her hand. She couldn't just hang up and try for the Doctor she knew. This one was involved now… or River was. "Well, all right. Can he - "

"No," River answered shortly. "He's a bit ... tied up, at the moment. I'm coming. I'm doing it," she stressed, and that was obviously for the benefit of the Doctor. Before Martha could say another word, the line went dead.

"Did you get him?" Asked Jeanes. "The Doctor?"

Martha raised her head and fixed him with a bitter little smile. "I really don't know."

She realised that she hadn't relayed anything about her situation or position to River, when a woman suddenly popped out of nowhere. No familiar TARDIS heralded her appearance; she was simply there. She was wearing a long dress seemingly made of scales which clung to her, and ran from bright red at her straps to black the hem. Her curls were loose but not a one was out of place; and she was tapping a device at her wrist.

Martha rose and walked toward her. She, in her black fatigues beside River’s evening gown, felt as though she had stepped into a surprise costume party. "Those are bad for you," she said as way of greeting, nodding to the Vortex Manipulator.

River shrugged carelessly. "Yes. Trying to give them up. Hello. Professor River Song."

"Dr Martha Jones, UNIT. What are you a professor of?"

"Archaeology."

"Seriously!"

"What's funny about archaeology?" 

Martha gestured to her wrist. "You can see anything in the universe in its heyday. Don't you get impatient digging up, I don't know, Pompeii, when you could've seen a play there or something?"

River just gave a funny little smile and shrugged. Apparently there was more to archaeology than Martha understood. 

It occurred to Martha that she had every right to be suspicious. Yes, the woman had the Doctor's phone and he'd been faintly audible in the background, but she could be anyone. And she could've done anything with the Doctor. Had Martha more time she might've vetted her more thoroughly, or demand the Doctor come in person. The Doctor hadn't sent this woman, she'd sent herself. Martha's intuition was sound, however. She had relied on it as both time traveller and doctor. Right now, her intuition was telling her she could rely on the help of River Song. At the very least, it wasn't screaming danger or warning her away. The fact was that this woman radiated confidence and competency and, undeniably, a certain _Doctorism_ of her own. She had trusted the Doctor almost at once upon meeting him and that feeling persisted again with River.

"So what are we dealing with? Kestefarian, you said?" River was all business. Another shell hit close by and she did not even flinch, which was more than could be said for the men surrounding them.

"Yes," Martha replied, and prepared a quick debrief. "A few weeks we discovered a bit of their tech in the Orkneys. Only, we didn't know it was theirs - just that it was alien. So we started examining it. Then yesterday the Kestefarians make themselves known and described in good detail their object - it's definitely theirs - and they want it back."

"The complication?"

"It's strapped itself to the calf of one of our junior researchers. If they want it back, they have to take Rasheed."

"Or Rasheed's leg."

"Yeah, not funny," Martha answered. "So we've tried reasoning with them but they're having none of it. And now we're in the bunker while they shell - "

"Where are we?"

Martha didn't miss a beat. "The Orkneys. UNIT's made use of some very deep, ancient tunnels nobody knew were here. They link up underneath the Cromarty Cairns. Unfortunately, they're a rabbit warren of blind corners and dead ends. The excavation to provide escape routes was never finished. The shelling's knocked out all our communication with UNIT HQ and blocking all signals - except to the Doctor's phone. He's done something to it, it's got a better signal than anything else on Earth."

"Wouldn't solve your problem even if you could get out," River answered. "You're not familiar with Kestefarian tech, are you? Their ships are very sensitive. Yes, you could knock one out of the sky with a rocket, but then every little piece of debris becomes its own little subset ship. Their tech's a hive mind network. You either neutralise the mothership - and I seriously doubt you've got anything that could do that on hand - or you take the other way."

“All right, I’ll bite – what’s the other way?”

River turned on Martha with the kind of grin that sent shivers down her spine. 

 

Thirty-one minutes later saw Martha and River sitting on Hoy’s rocks, overlooking Scapa Flow. They were eating loaves of light bread filled with tiny bubbles, not unlike an Aero Bar. At least, likening it to bread was the best Martha could do. The shape was bread-like and the aroma generally croissanty, with a hint of mascarpone and new carpet. 

“So tell me again,” River said, tucking a curl behind one ear. The wind was picking up, making it somewhat treacherous to navigate not eating one’s own hair. “What happened, should you meet my Doctor and my Doctor should ask?”

“How should I know him? You won’t describe him.”

“You’ll know,” River deadpanned. “Bit excitable about himself, this one.”

Martha rolled her eyes. Her new friend didn’t really seem that bothered about the Doctor finding out – it was more like a game, something she could hold over him and allow to be squeezed out of her, bit by bit, right down to the last maddening and pleasurable detail. “We went up there, and we talked them out of it.”

“That’s right, it was all perfectly reasonable and amicable.”

“We didn’t time jump on to their mothership and invert the hive mind traffic and amplify the voices.”

“Wouldn’t know how to do that,” River breezed.

“And it didn’t cause the hive mind to implode – “

“Critical failure, shame that,” River agreed, nodding at the water.

“ – shut down, and rain down in harmless specks.”

“Not so harmless,” River replied. “You’ll want to gather all those up. Your man Rasheed knows how clingy Kestefarian tech is. You don’t want tourists Instagramming all that rubbish. Assuming that happened, which it never did, according to the Doctor.”

Martha took another springy bite, chewed and swallowed. “And we didn’t pinch their rations on the way out.”

“God, no.”

“Wait,” Martha studied the loaf with sudden distaste, “this isn’t … _recycled food_ , is it?”

River gave her head a brief shake and stood, brushing the crumbs from her clothes. “No. That’s why I didn’t pinch the wine. Well Martha, it’s been lovely, thanks for the exercise. I suppose I could go back to the instant I left him … but it is better after he’s been _waiting_ a little while. He does get wonderfully cross,” she added, her tone laced with a devious edge.

“Wait,” Martha interjected, standing. 

River was poised before her, as though she had intended to take flight before the conversation could take this turn. They had both known it would. Beyond River, she could see the UNIT soldiers gathering up the fragments of the Kestefarian ships and placing them carefully in large, charcoal sacks. They were using long-handled sticks with grasping mechanisms on the end – too cautious now to touch them directly.

Martha was aware River would stay only so long, and directed her attention fully back to her. She had so many questions, and a very brief time to decide which ones she should ask. She had not seen the Doctor but getting River was an unexpected boon – perhaps there lay with her answers he would never indulge.

“Is he all right?”

“He’s always all right,” River answered. It was a hollow reassurance. Martha knew at once she had been wrong; River was as indomitable as the Doctor himself, as dangerous, and she possessed as many secrets. And she would protect the Doctor’s, even from those who loved him.

“Are you with him? He’s not alone, is he?” Martha pressed, when she sensed hesitation after the first part of her question.

“No, he’s not alone,” said River, a ghost of a smile upon her lips. “He’s with my …” something seemed too difficult to explain, so she finished with, “he’s with a good friend.”

“I couldn’t stand it if he was alone,” Martha said, quieter. “I left for … for me. I was so glad when he found Donna. She’s good for him.”

“So were you.”

“Does he – “

“No, but now I’ve met you, you must’ve been.” River began programming her vortex manipulator. “And this is where I leave you! Sorry about the mess. Do give it a good once-over before you go.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve any good tips for Rasheed’s leg?”

River chuckled, coordinates complete. “You’re the doctor.”

Martha found herself smiling. “Mind that,” she nodded to the device on River’s wrist. “Landing’s bumpy.”

“Then you need more practice.”

There was a crackle of energy, and Martha stood alone by the sea. She gazed at the place River had occupied, and then out at the choppy, dark-green water. She was smiling faintly. The Doctor kept her phone, even with a new face, he kept her phone …

Her smile slipped. Debris was washing ashore. She shouted to her soldiers without taking her eyes off it.

“How many of you can swim?”


End file.
